


Whatever I Want

by typhe



Series: Pact [1]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: CMNM, D/s, Hair-pulling, LHM, M/M, Orgasm Control, PWP, Power Exchange, pairing meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:31:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All I want from you is your body.  Give it to me, to do whatever I want with for the night.  Or whatever I tell you to do with it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever I Want

**Author's Note:**

> This was macabre_monkey's fault. XD Both this and her Stef/Van BDSM series, [Unexpected](http://archiveofourown.org/series/13029), grew out of our ship meta chatter as a sort of mutual dare.

I set my pen aside the moment I hear the door open. Put the ink away. Snuff out the candle on my writing-desk. He's more important than writing and I wasn't getting anywhere anyway, not with most of me inwardly fidgetting while I waited for my lifebonded to finally get here.

He's wavering by the door, as if he's taking a moment to realise he's home, he's safe, that someone's here for him and that someone is me. I take his hands wordlessly - they feel stiff and cold. After so many murderously long hours in Council I know the last thing he'll want to do is talk much, and I requisitioned dinner for the councillors hours ago, so I just lead him straight to bed, sitting on top of the covers and easing him down beside me. He allows himself to lean on my shoulder, and I can sense, in the shape of a fuzzy emotional lump weighing down our lifebond, formless stresses that he can't simply shrug off once he's at rest. This seems a strange affliction to me, as I'm one to shut the door, take off my shoes and leave the world outside to its problems; Vanyel's spent a lot of time in unsafe places - maybe he needs _more_ than just a bolthole to curl up in while the chase goes past outside, and if so, I might be the worst person in the world to look to for it, growing up as I did on the streets or under temple awnings or in basement rooms so foul even the rats had abandoned them; I don't _know_ what we're meant to be doing for each other here, but between the two of us I hope we can figure it out.

Being here for him at the end of a long day is a start, and I think he needs and deserves all the care I can give to him. It's not long before he relaxes more fully, putting an arm around me, letting me nudge him onto his back. "I'm sorry." His words were spoken to my neck, so quiet and muffled I don't even have the heart to hush his fool apologies. "I get tired of serving people who won't do anything except argue with each other."

His bleak words seem to define the world whose weight he feels on his shoulders - calling himself servant to the council he almost rules, calling the council a people who joust in the form of their representatives, which is further than I've ever been able to see from my gutter-level perspective. There's nothing I can do to either brighten his frame of reference or to change it. So I'll do what I can do - I turn his face in my hands and kiss him, ungentle and open and _listening_ for his answer to the inevitably following question - _is what I can do ever enough to soothe you?_

His response is about as needy as his weariness can allow, yielding under my tongue then pushing back with a near-resentful fervour. Maybe a little? Maybe not enough.

The thought's been growing on me, that I could try something - well, different - but I'm really not sure how to explain it. I need to show him, not tell him, but I can't start doing that before letting him know the rules -

Right. That's it. It can be like a game. A sexual game. I think I can find a way to say that to him. I break away from the kiss and shift in our embrace until I'm lying atop of him, elbows propped on the pillow above his shoulders, fingers getting playfully lost in his hair. "Van, I'd like to make a pact with you."

He looks perplexed. He brokers pacts every week - paper-thin pieces of peace made between warring factions, in the hopes they'll feel too polite to break them. "What do you mean?"

 _Keep it level._ Keep it as playful and demanding as any of the ridiculous chess handicaps I've imposed upon him in the last few months. "I'll give you a break from all that tonight - no more worrying, no more trying to argue. I'll not have you do anything but feel and be happy for once." My next few words have to be serious, and close, and quiet. "All I want from you is your body. Give it to me, to do whatever I want with for the night. Or whatever I tell you to do with it." I hold his eyes, watching the idea sink in. "It might hurt a little sometimes," fair warning, that, "but mostly, I'll make sure you like it." And a promise.

He's frozen still underneath me, and I can't feel anything through our bond at all. For a few moments I just lie on him and breathe, betraying no expectations of his answer. I doubt he's done anything like this before, but he doesn't seem shocked or disgusted. I can only hope that he's intrigued enough, and that he trusts me enough, to take me up on this.

His reply, when it comes, is quite definite, and he almost doesn't sound tired. "I'm yours."

*

"Good." I roll off him and back to my feet, grabbing the candle on the nightstand. "Take all your clothes off." I go back over to my desk, and re-light the extinguished candle from the one I'm holding. "No point having something if I can't touch it." Then I light the three candles on the mantlepiece, and the one I left by the door, and even the two stubs I'd dropped by the hearth. "Or see it," I add. I toss more kindling on the fire for good measure, poverty instincts wailing at this profligate waste of perfectly good fuel, but oh, it makes a lovely light. It's not like we've never had sex in broad daylight, but this intentional obliteration of midnight is new and pointed; I'm _not allowing_ him the privacy of shadow.

I turn back to him and find him sat at the edge of the bed, slipping off his hose; he meets my eyes easily, his own bright with reflected light and curious anticipation, as if to say he's playing along with this, as if to ask _what next?_ He's already become hard before my scrutiny, which sends a rush of pleasure from my eyes to my own cock in eagerness to match it. _I_ did that, and I did it without even touching him - it was either my looking at him that turned him on so much, or my making him let me look, I don't know, but having that kind of power over him is a hell of a headrush.

His compliance seems promising, but I can't leave this up to guesswork, not when I've a much better tool available. I put the first candle back in its original spot and return to him, standing in front of the spot where he sits naked on our bed. He reaches for my hips and I let him, hands sliding up to his shoulders as he pulls me closer, his eager fingers looking for gaps in my clothing, but I shrug him away. "Don't you dare. I'll decide whose clothes stay on." He frowns. Trying to feel out the rules of this game. I cup his face with hands still warm from my candles. "One more thing. Don't shield our lifebond."

"But you'll -"

Gods, he's still trying to spare me of his day-to-day stresses and mindhurts. "Van, I don't _mind_ how bad it feels. I need to _know_. I need to be able to see you, and touch you, and know how you're feeling."

He doesn't reply, but I feel his assent from the inside, unveiled in cautious layers; I hold his face gently, because he's taught me how to let touch and eye contact heighten these detached sensations of worries, fears, pains that _aren't mine_ \- and I try to reach back to him through it all, because even if there's shades in there that my little hopes can't chase away the simple pain of a headache is not something I'm going to let go unchallenged. "Thank you. Leave it unshielded," I let all kinds of tender lusts slip through with these words, and instil them as best as I can with my ability to unmake pain, "or this stops. Immediately."

Which, I really don't need to point out, is an easy out if at any point he should want one.

He nods between my hands; thus assured of his good behaviour, I run a thumb along his mouth, and follow it a moment later with my tonguetip before claiming his mouth properly. His lips part easily under mine, and I see his eyes slip closed; I climb onto the bed as I kiss him, my knee parting his thighs and nudging at his cock, and I reach down with one hand to stroke him properly, from the head to the base and back again, feeling - tasting - the gasped sound he makes in his throat rather than hearing it. My hand slips behind his head, weaving in his hair, and - because I as good as told him I might and sometimes you just have to do things to see what happens if you do - I twist my grip sideways, tugging his scalp hard.

He shudders, hips lifting him up into my hand, and I feel heat surging through him as if drawn to the surface by the sting of pain. He kisses me furious and hungry and gasping, and I greedily accept the unexpectedly bold response to my own boldness.

I release his hair and bring my fingers back to brush against his mouth again, watching as he catches and kisses and suckles them, feeling pure satisfaction at the sight of Vanyel reduced to such wantonness. He seems to be letting go of all the things in his head that aren't lust for me. I'm not sure what to think of myself - I've never hurt him on purpose before and at any other moment it would be unthinkable. We're _lifebonded_ \- we're not boys chasing cheap thrills. But...it felt so good to make him hurt and _want_ like that, and he's as turned-on as I've ever made him - shamelessly rubbing his hard cock against my hand, a bead of moisture breaking at its peak.

Am I going to do it again? Yes. I am. Maybe harder.

I touch my thumb to the head of his cock, spreading that single clear pearl around and feeling him buck against my touch. I know I could make him come like this - just by touching gently and watching him, by talking to him about what he looks like right now and what his body is to me, what a prize and what an instrument - but I've no intention of closing this pact so soon. I step back onto the ground, bare toes digging in the rug as I stand beside the bedpost, nodding at the ground next to me. "Get on your knees."

*

He does as I tell him. Carnival madness, being able to assume such brazen authority over someone who's twice my age, who outranks me in every respect except ability to play the fiddle left-handed, and who could easily kill me just by _thinking_ about it. Like if I let it slip for a moment it'll run away like so much fresh ink left out in the rain - but as long as I keep holding it and pushing and twisting, it's as real and strong as wrought iron. I've wielded stranger fictions, but this one is almost too immediate to be merely unreal. It might just be the _best lie ever._

I look down and find he's staring, subtle as ever, at the peaked front of my breeches. "See something you want?" I ask.

"...Yes." With that quiet admission, a blush spreads across his face.

His lips are tantalisingly parted, and I could easily undo a few buttons and slide my cock between them right now. But, again, why quit while I'm having so much fun?

"I might let you have it, if you ask me nicely." He looks up at me, eyebrows raised in incredulity, as if he can't quite believe what I'm demanding. "Go on - you know what you want, so ask for it." I lean back on the bedpost, arms stretched above my head, grinning from ear to ear at the joy of being so thoroughly unreasonable. His surprise subsides, and I feel discomfort rearing up beneath it. He doesn't like to outright say what he wants, not in any crude fashion. I'd already realised this. That's why I told him to do it.

I said it might hurt a little, didn't I?

I feel him struggling with the circumstances I've imposed on him - the exposure, naked while I'm clothed, not permitted to hide his body or his feelings or to leave his desires silent. All these things I've done to force him to forget himself and the exalted position he holds in the world outside this room - to be just a man, just a body, just a giver and receiver of sexual joy. His cock moves as I watch him breathe, his arousal unconcealable and unfaltering. "I..."

I stretch a hand down to his throat and tickle gently at his adam's apple, as if to say, _what you gave to me? Includes this. Your voice. It's mine. Sing for me._

The puzzle-box he's turning over in his mind seems to click open. "I want to..." It's like hearing him set down the weight of all that dignity and pride, freeing the raw, defiant lust he hides beneath it. His language a parody of courtliness. "I bid your leave to suck your cock," - and he adds ironically but in all seriousness - "milord."

Well, now. I like the sound of that. Very much so. I'm straining against my buttons, and I fumble them open them before they can fall off, offering him the sight of my flesh for the first time. "You're most welcome." He rates no honorific or nom-de-guerre.

He puts a hand to me, and I set my meagre weight against the bedpost behind my shoulders, knees quivering as he takes my head between his lips, toes curling into the rug as he slides on down the shaft. Gods, but he's _good_ at this.

*

I made him ask for this, as if it were me granting him the indulgence. Maybe - I can feel him feeling my pleasure at his efforts, one of those self-sustaining loops of pure mutual joy that I had no idea were possible until I had him in my arms and my life - maybe I am. My hand slips behind his head, stroking his neck with my fingers, encouragement for his steady back-and-forth sucking, for the lapping of his tongue at the underside of my cock.

I am - I really - he is good at this - I made him _ask my leave_ and now he has it by the gods is he using it, to - to _let go_ , eyes closed to slits while he moves with determined hunger. Not fretting over anything but _me_ and gods he seems the better for it. I really am, I - his whole life depends on being dignified and neutral and costumed for political office, always in control and in power, and I _let him_ want to be naked on his knees for a man's cock. He needs this, needs me, needs my permission to feel all this thoughtless desire and to act on it, because if not me then who? - and much as I love the more civilised parts of him I don't want anything for us right now except fucking and feeling, so I lower my other hand to his head and tug at his hair, hard.

He gasps around my cock, in surprise as much as pain, but I don't let go. I keep him moving, both hands holding and not letting him pause or think or _anything_ but get carried along in that loop of want and sensation and my pleasure and his rush of pain and I grab another thin lock of his hair and do it _again_.

He makes a sound around a mouthful of me, and it's not hurt at how I'm touching him now but fulfilled anticipation of it, the voice that he gave over to me being pulled by my hands from that place inside of us that just wants to _make sound happen_. I don't let him stop. I guide him with rough touches and tugs, forcing those need-pain sounds as we move, clumsy playing of a fine and beloved instrument, fucking his mouth and hurting him and letting him feel anything-everything that's between us. All the power, lust and selfish love that's living in this tangled bond between us - I want him to _give in_ to it, _I want -_

I come so hard I'd fall if he hadn't been there to hold me upright by the hips. He swallows without my asking, because he can tell what I want right now. Nothing, no exercise of any of my several talents, has ever made me feel as much in control as this.

*

Gods, that felt _good_. I sprawl over on the edge of the bed, looking at him warmly - lips rosy from use, hair pleasingly out of place, that slight smile that knows how satisfied he's made me. Godsdammit, he loves doing things to make people happy. I'm viscerally glad I told him not to shield our bond, because I want him to feel this. I want him to know how happy he makes me every moment we're together and even when we're not.

I'm not a complete monster. "Get yourself some water." I watch him get to his feet, easing blood into limbs cramped from kneeling - strange to realise that I didn't _have_ to grant him reasonable comfort, that I could have simply left him there while I got my head together and he might have been too caught up in this to even have complained... It's unnerving, thinking what this lie that I'm performing is capable of should I let it. Should I really have enjoyed _hurting_ my lifebonded? Even if he seemed to want it?

He's pouring himself a cup of water, and I take a good look at him - disarrayed hair falling over his shoulders, brushing against the maze of scars on his back, his finely toned legs and ass tempting me to all kinds of filthy thoughts... I cup my cock in one hand, starting to ease it back to alertness; its work is not yet done, but it is blessedly tireless. Van pauses, hand on the water-jug, as he senses my returning lust. Looks at me and smiles longsufferingly, as if to say _does the sex in you never run dry?_

He sits at the head of the bed, sipping mouthfuls of water; I can sense his gladness to be washing away the taste of my come and the much worse flavour of his preceding hours of godawful legalese, and it seems like he has gratitude to me, for that nothing. His own cock juts rigid above his thighs, and I stare at it appreciatively while I stroke myself. This is as much showmanship as self-indulgence; I'm making him see me play while his own cock remains wanting and untouched. It's another undeserved cruelty, but one that I hope will stoke anticipation, make it mean all the more to him when I do bring his pleasure.

He seems all in a lull, setting his cup aside and waiting peacefully for me to start on him again. Like the situation gives him no other option. He's waiting on my godsdamn _leave_ and I can use that, and I probably should.

"Tell me how you're feeling." (It's not like I don't _know_ \- I'm getting a backdraft of every emotion and sensation - but I want to hear it in his own words. I want to make him think about it.)

"Apart from the obvious?"

My desk candle's dying, but he still can't hide either his fantastic erection or the whispering urgency being carried over our bond, pining at me to tend it for him. (Which I'm going to. Eventually.) "Including the obvious," I reply. I want to hear it while he's still too turned-on and entranced to think of a way out of speaking his mind. I can feel the imposition of my will on his words as sure as if my thumb were held to his throat.

He hesitates, but this time I don't feel him struggling with himself to obey me - only fumbling to fit words around what this strange fiction is doing to him. "I...I like it. Like I've been craving a chance to, to not have to decide how far I can go. To let you...take whatever you want, without anything held back."

He's avoiding my eyes, and that strikes me as relevant. "Kind of impersonal, isn't it? Not in a bad way, but it's all sex and no complications -"

"Yes. It's good to feel _simpler_ \- I think I spend half my life making judgement calls about human minutiae and I'm so sick of it sometimes. And a lot of the time, it's about power. When to show it and when to hide it."

I nod. "It hits me every so often that you could easily -" _kill me_ "- level the city if you wanted to." ( _It's usually when I'm awake in the early morning and you're asleep next to me - looking gentle and peaceful in the dawnlight - and then I realise. I used to sleep with a knife under my pillow, until I started sleeping beside you. Weapons are_ meaningless _, next to you._ My hands, still toying with my cock, shiver at the thought of taking this lie by the hilt. Assuming power over him isn't absurd, it's _terrifying_.)

He shrugs. "I could. But I'd have to go all the way to K'Treva Vale if I wanted to so much as hold your hand in public without being stared at - what kind of powerlessness is that?" I chew my lip. True, and unexpected. I know he calculates such things, and more cautiously than I do _because_ of his position, but that he feels strongly enough about _me_ to sound so resentful about it - "Stef, I'm more tired of power than I knew."

"I suppose...the more of it you have, the more it means to give it up." I look up at him, conscious that I've stumbled on a great and serious truth in the depths of this farce. "Thank you. For giving it to me. It's beyond an honour."

He shrugs, smiling lightly. "You deserve honours for putting up with me. But, _ashke_...I never asked for power, I never wanted to be a mage - much less a politician. All I ever asked was to make music and to love whoever I wanted to." His eyes, silver touched with reflected flame, meet mine for the first time in minutes, and my heart trembles. There are some things I'd _never_ force him to say to me, but damn if he doesn't have ways of letting me know. "Thank you for setting me free."

*

Enough with the talking. It's not going to get any better or more meaningful than that. "Elbows and knees, now."

"Milord." He obeys, and I see him watching slyly over his shoulder as I finally strip; honestly, I've always thought I'm not much to look at from the neck down - scrawny and pale enough to see bones through (childhood malnutrition will do that to a body) - but I'm touched by his disagreement with that assessment. As if the way he's pointing his beautiful ass at me wasn't appreciation enough.

I go rummage among the necessities in our nightstand, not taking my eyes off him all the while. I realise I'm trying to see him in dual vision - both as a person I love and would do anything for, and as the object of my capricious pleasures. The truth out of one eye, a consensual lie out of the other, overlaying it. I'm duelling with myself too; between the urge that's grown in me in these months of positive and uncoerced use of that wild gift of mine to _use_ it, to heal pain wherever I find it, and the urge to cause pain because for whatever unspeakable reason I find it gratifying. I feel both of those things, unresolvable and not even needing resolution, not now they somehow _both mean the same thing_ and what I want is to explore that or at least take it out on the source of that conflict, human-inhuman fragile unbreakable flesh.

Enough with the thinking. I slick my cock with a handful of sandalwood oil, and almost absently issue another command as I do so. "Touch yourself." He shifts posture to comply, head slumping on a pillow as one hand reaches between his legs, and he groans at his own touch on flesh too aroused and too neglected, painfully engorged under fingers that I know couldn't satisfy him now even if he wanted to get off that way - like his body is a foreign force, under my control. Must remind him of that. "And don't come. You'll come when I tell you to." Another groan, mingled frustration and craving for the submission I'm demanding from him.

I get on my knees behind him and slip my hand in his crack, and he immediately pushes back towards it. I'm glad he's so eager - one might call it _desperate_ \- but I'm sparing with the oiling and stretching. I want him tight, and I'm going to have what I want because there's no point in playing this game unless I get to win.

Even if that means hurting him, again. Gods, what _is_ this? Since our first night together I've used sex - I've _made love with him_ , and I hadn't a blind clue that was real before - to show how I feel about him, because words aren't more than draftlines for what I really want to get across to him, and what is it I'm trying to _say_ to him here, now?

_I'm going to fuck you like I don't care about anything except your body, and you're going to like it._

He told me to take whatever I want.

I slip inside, exhaling at the heat and the tightness and how good it feels and inching toward the place where he'll feel just as good as I do. He's so open to me, I know as soon as I'm there, and I move back before he's had more than a mere taste of it. Again. Sliding and thrusting and getting all of what I want while teasing him as best I know how.

My mouth finds the back of his neck, tracing a curve down his shoulders, lips giving way to teeth as I fuck him and he thrusts back and gasps. His hand falters at the too-much-of-everything, and I meet it with my own, threading my fingers between his around his shaft and touching him the way I know he likes it because it's exactly what he _doesn't_ want right now, still bound by my words - _don't come_ \- while my hand and my relentless fucking push him toward that precipice.

If there was any dignity left in him I've now crushed it. He's begging me. Hissed, jumbled words, _oh gods oh stars - Stef - my - milord I - please - no I - yes - please can - I - please_

I don't know if he's pleading with me to stop or to carry on, and if I did stop I can't imagine he'd fall silent... I don't want to stop. I want to let my pleasure build while he hovers on that murmuring edge, waiting - and oh gods I like knowing it - waiting _for my leave_ to tumble over it. I haven't given it and he can't make me, can't defy me, _can't_. I've always used sex to show how I feel and this time it's to show that I _control_ him, that he's _mine_ and nothing beyond that matters now I have him pleading helplessly under me, butterfly pinned by my body against the wall of my will, and he falls silent, knowing that his words won't move me.

I can't not fill silence any more than I can not heal pain so I wait bare seconds then whisper close against his neck; _"Come now."_

I feel it, oh gods do I feel it, shuddering through his body and our bond at the place we're connected, his release strong enough to pull mine along with it, inside him, our pact sealed.

*

I roll off his back with little grace. "Alright. Pass me a handkerchief, and after that, I'll release you from this filthy arrangement."

"Aye, milord." That nonsense-word again, going straight to my smug little head, and he knows it, even as he wipes my hand and my cock clean so I don't have to. Bastard. He pulls the blankets back too, beckoning me under the covers with him, and we settle easily together, his head tucked against mine. I smooth out his hair with my hand,as if my touch could set us back to normal, as if we have a normal. As if he needs my hands' reassurance. I think he does.

Even after sex, he's not usually this relaxed. I guess I did something right, then - made a peaceful foundation for I'm-too-tired-to-know-what, cleared out space for him to pause and breathe in the wilds of his life. And for me, too. Trepidations or no, I liked every moment of it and he's not rebuked me for it yet; I'm sure he _does_ have his limits, but I'll sleep wondering how far we could go before finding them.

He nudges me in the ribs. "So can we do that again sometime soon?"

"Gods, you're exhausting," I mumble. "Gladly, love. Now go to sleep."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Whatever I Want](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5753962) by [Kess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/pseuds/Kess)




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